The life of a behind-the-scenes player

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In Washington parlance, they are known as 'the guy behind the guy.'Close

When Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testified during her confirmation hearing this year, veteran Washington counterterrorism expert Rand Beers was visible just over her left shoulder. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ notoriously press-averse special assistant Robert Rangel can often be spotted just behind him. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s backup is often a woman: spokeswoman Michelle Smith, who served in a similar capacity for Bernanke’s predecessor, Alan Greenspan.

Officially, guys behind the guy serve one of two functions: They are there to help the principal on substance or to spin the media. Sometimes both.

But unofficially, they often function as a sort of a security blanket for the person who’s truly at the center of attention. “It brings a level of comfort to the guy to have you there,” said Tom Korologos, a former ambassador to Belgium who, earlier in his career, helped scores of officials prepare for Capitol Hill testimony and was frequently the guy behind the guy.

There are three key tricks of the trade.

Keep a poker face. The audience is watching, and any grimace, eye roll or snicker — especially if it comes in response to a dumb question from a member of Congress — can get the boss in trouble. The best tactic to avoid this is furious note-taking. “I take 15 to 20 pages of notes during a hearing,” said one veteran. “I don’t even need them. I just throw them out when I get back to the office.”

Mind your bladder. Congressional hearings can go on for hours, and once in the guy-behind-the-guy seat, it’s nearly impossible to get up. So veterans suggest one very important tip: no coffee on hearing days.

But that advice can conflict with another cardinal rule of the club: Stay awake. Even the briefest moment of shut-eye can be a career killer.

Eric Ruff, a former Department of Defense guy behind the guy for Rumsfeld, recalls that, during one hearing, the BlackBerrys of a whole row of DOD aides lit up at the same time with an e-mail from the Pentagon. It was a message to a staffer who mistakenly thought he was out of camera range. It said: “You’re nodding off. We’re watching you right now.” The entire row of Pentagon employees was cc’ed on the e-mail so that someone could poke the snoozing staffer in the ribs.

Perhaps the most famous sleeping-bureaucrat incident came on Feb. 12, 2003, when a female economist working with Greenspan, then the chairman of the Federal Reserve, fell asleep directly in view of the cameras. Her agonizing struggle to stay conscious, replete with drooping eyelids and sudden jerks of her head, went on for 15 minutes or more.

In a live report on CNN, financial reporter Fred Katayama described the scene as traders on Wall Street gathered around TV screens to watch. “And then when the woman started, you know, fluttering her eyes and nodding and trying to get up,” Katayama said, “traders would just erupt in a loud cheer.”

The guy behind the guy is just one element of the detailed image maintenance that goes into high-profile Capitol Hill testimony. If Washington were Hollywood, the guys behind the guy would be the extras whose presence completes the scene. But the image making includes props, too.